Footnotes

Chapter I:

1. In the summer of 1939 a delegation of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, accompanied by Major-General A. G. L. McNaughton, the President of the National Research Council, visited England to study armament production and explain Canadian industrial capacity to the British authorities. It should be mentioned also that a Survey of Industry from the point of view of defence production was in progress in Canada; 1600 plante had been surveyed by the spring of 1939.

2. In 1940 this term became obsolete, and the force was designated "Canadian Army (Active)". The term used in pre-war planning was "Canadian Field Force"; this was changed to "Canadian Active Service Force" on 1 September 1939.

3. These included some units provided as the result of a British request and originally intended for service in British formations pending the possible organization of a Canadian corps. In the event, they served under Canadian command throughout.

4. Brigadier Crerar was promoted Major-General as of 15 January 1940.

5. Now The Loyal Edmonton Regiment.

Chapter II:

1. The force in Great Britain and Northern Ireland in August 1940 amounted to 28 Divisions (two of them Armoured) plus seven Anti-Aircraft Divisions and a large number of independent brigades of various types.

2. Lord Dowding, then C.-in-C. Fighter Command, considers that the Battle of Britain may be said to have begun on 10 July. A directive from Hitler's headquarters dated 1 August refers to "the air offensive against Britain, scheduled to begin on approximately August 5".

3. Examination of German documents has indicated that at the height of the battle the R.A.F. over-estimated the enemy's losses. From 24 August to 6 September, for instance, the estimate was 643 aircraft destroyed; the actual number was 378, plus 115 damaged. (The Germans at the time admitted the loss of 243.)

4. Hitler could never face quite squarely this question of invading Britain: the prospect always alarmed him. Invasion was not part of his original plan for the 1940 campaign, which is summarized in the following terms in German naval records dated 25 November 1939: "By means of offensive action in the west and an advance into the area of the French Channel coast, we must seek to obtain favourable strategic bases for an offensive war against Britain by submarines, mines and aircraft". On 19 January 1941 Hitler told Mussolini and Ciano that, in the matter of invading Britain, "we are in the position of a man with only one round left in his rifle; if he misses, the situation is worse than before."

5. At this time a Canadian civilian who had once been a member of the University of Toronto Contingent, Canadian Officers Training Corps, was working in an aircraft equipment factory at Cheltenham, England. When the works formed a Home Guard unit, he joined it; and in due course, to his considerable astonishment, he was issued a Ross rifle bearing the mark of the U.o.T. C.O.T.C.!

6. That is, it was a reserve force not under any of the English Commands, but directly under G.H.Q. Home Forces.

7. The total does not include a very few departures by air. It does include roughly 2000 duplications, caused by individuals returning to Canada and then going to the United Kingdom a second time. Embarkation for Iceland (2674 in number) have also been included, as the Iceland force moved to the United Kingdom in due course.

8. These exercises are outlined in somewhat greater detail in Chapter II of The Canadians in Britain, 1939-1944.

9. The first Canadian-made Brens reached the Canadian force in the United Kingdom early in November 1940. The merits of the particular contract entered into in 1938 are not a matter for discussion here; but there can be no controversy on the fact that it was very fortunate for the country that an arrangement for the manufacture of Bren guns was made at that time.

Chapter III:

1. At the time of Germany's surrender, there were 2788 all ranks of the Canadian Army in Newfoundland, 480 in Labrador, 786 in Jamaica, 163 in the Bahamas, and 181 in Bermuda. At an earlier time, a detachment of the Veterans Guard of Canada had served in British Guiana, protecting bauxite ships on the Demerara River.

2. These Home Defence divisions were never wholly complete in all services; they did not need to be.

3. On the commitments, see above, p. 4.

Chapter IV:

1. General McNaughton, who already possessed authority to commit Canadian forces to "minor" enterprises, at once dispatched to Ottawa a Most Secret cable explaining that something larger was afoot and asking that his authority be widened accordingly. This was done, subject to his being satisfied in each case that the project concerned was practicable and valuable. In the interest of secrecy, no information as to the time or place of the raid was requested by or sent to Canada; but before it finally took place General Stuart.visited England and was presumably fully informed.

2. Radio Direction Finding (now called Radar).

3. Army tanks (so called because normally, at least theoretically, controlled by an Army headquarters until released to a lower formation) were tanks for the assault role, more heavily armoured and slower than the "cruisers" used in armoured divisions. They were also known as "I" (infantry) tanks.

4. When the operation was revived in mid-July, Admiral Baillie-Grohman was no longer available, and Captain J. Hughes-Hallett, who had been associated with the planning of the operation from the beginning, was appointed instead.

5. The revival of the project was not a result of the abandonment of SLEDGEHAMMER. The chronology should be carefully noted. The decision to revive the Dieppe operation was taken by Combined Operations Headquarters by 14 July and approved by the Chiefs of Staff Committee on 20 July. On 25 July the Anglo-American conferees in London decided to invade North Africa (thus finally rejecting for 1942 the Second Front in France). On 12 August Mr. Churchill arrived in Moscow.

6. This change was facilitated by the availability of two new infantry landing ships which had not been ready in time for the earlier scheme.

Chapter V:

1. All times in the narrative that follows are B.S.T., except in direct quotations from German documents. The Germans were operating on the equivalent of British Double Summer Time, one hour in advance.

2. The reasons for the half-hour's delay were naval. Had the frontal and flank assaults been simultaneous, there would not have been sea-room for all the ships and craft involved; moreover, this would have entailed the infantry landing ships leaving harbour half an hour earlier, and they would almost certainly have been sighted by the German evening air reconnaissance.

3. 3:00 a.m.

4. Italics represent underlining in the original document. The time mentioned (3:50 a.m. B.S.T.) is that of the encounter with the German convoy.

5. This account of the operation has been developed from one by the present writer which was published in the Canadian Geographical Journal for August, 1943. As to sources, several hundred personal accounts were written by individual Canadians immediately after the raid. In addition, the Historical Section interviewed many soldiers, including repatriated prisoners. Our accounts of unit operations derive in great part from this personal evidence.

6. The order from the headquarters ship for the battalion to withdraw and re-embark was apparently passed on to this company and was understood as an executive order from the Commanding officer, although it was not so intended.

7. The arrangements for the withdrawal had largely to be improvised. The intention had been to take most of the troops off in tank landing craft, but in the conditions actually existing it was out of the question to send these large and vulnerable vessels in, and assault landing craft (small bullet-proof boats capable of carrying about a platoon of infantry apiece) had to be used. These circumstances merely increase the credit due the Navy.

8. Of these, however, it seems likely that nearly 1000 had never landed. Only about 500 men appear to have been evacuated from the main beaches in front of the town. It is of interest to note that the little destroyer Calpe herself brought back 278 wounded soldiers.

9. The order provided that two copies might be taken ashore by each brigade headquarters. The Germans state that this copy was found on the body of a dead major on the Dieppe beach.

10. Maclean's, 1 March 1946.

11. It was the present writer's observation, however, that the operation's favourable effects upon morale were at least partly undone, as time passed, by the influence of the reports of continued criticism in Canada.

Chapter VI:

1. The new commander of the 2nd Division was Major-General E. L. M. Burns, formerly commanding an armoured brigade of the 4th Division.

2. For an account of battle drill training, see The Canadians in Britain, 1939-1944, pages 56-59.

3. General Sansom was succeeded in the command of the 5th Canadian Armoured Division by Major-General C. R. S. Stein, formerly Brigadier General Staff at Army Headquarters.

4. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division, the last formation to arrive from Canada, was not however sufficiently far on to take part in SPARTAN.

5. This of course has nothing to do with the fact that during the whole campaign in North-West Europe British divisions in varying numbers fought under the command of the First Canadian Army.

6. An "establishment" is "the authorized composition of a unit" as expressed in terms of numbers and ranks of personnel and numbers and types of weapons and transport.

7. Lieutenant-General J. C. Murchie (formerly yice-Chief of the General Staff) succeeded General Stuart at Ottawa as C.G.S. It is interesting to note that, during the period in which General Stuart acted as Army Commander, he, by his own decision, was not kept advised of the development of our invasion plans. The object was to minimize the number of officers "in the know".

8. See above, page 47. These matters are discussed at greater length in the booklet The Canadians in Britain, 1989-1944.

9. It was at the outset of a flight undertaken for the same purpose that Major-General Salmon was killed on 29 April.

10. The plan, did, however, include the capture of Syracuse and Licata on D Day.

Chapter VII:

1. The story of the Canadian campaign in Sicily and Southern Italy in 1943 is told in the booklet From Pachino to Ortona in somewhat greater detail than can be presented here. Some new information is however incorporated in this chapter.

2. During the Sicilian operations the Canadian divisional artillery was reinforced at various times by attached British unité. In particular, the 7th Medium Regiment and the 142nd (Self-Propelled) Field Regiment R.A. served the Division long and well.

3. Here there occurred a rare event: a German battalion (the 923rd Fortress Battalion) failed to fight, and fled "in a shameful manner without enemy pressure". The unit was dissolved and the Commanding officer and other officers court-martialled.

4. This position is called on German maps the Bernhard Line. Can it perhaps have been named for one of the Allied commanders whom it was intended to stop?

5. Hitler, who had asked to be kept specially informed about events at Termoli, must have been acutely displeased by the result. A few weeks later the 16th Panzer Division's commander, Maj.-Gen. Sieekenius, was removed.

6. Special Service.

Chapter VII:

[No footnotes for this Chapter.]

Chapter VIII:

1. The sequence of events in General Alexander's plan, as outlined at a conference on 8 November, was as follows: first, the Eighth Army offensive; secondly, an offensive on the Fifth Army front directed up the Liri and Sacco valleys to capture Frosinone; thirdly, a landing from the sea south of Rome--which ultimately materialized as the Anzio operation.

2. The German tanks involved came from the 26th Panzer Division. An entry in its war diary comments on "the excellent fire discipline of the enemy, who let our tanks approach to within 50 metres and then destroyed them".

3. It subsequently appeared that they were in fact enemy shells; the Germans were cleverly lobbing them in behind our barrage.

4. Why did the Germans fight so hard for Ortona? The answer seems to be that it had become a symbol. In a recorded telephone conversation of 25 December, Kesselring remarked that the Germans did not want to defend the place to the last extremity, "but the English have made it appear as important as Rome".

5. The extravagant cost of defending Ortona was repeatedly canvassed by German commanders and staff officers during the fighting. On 29 December the Chief of Staff of the 76th Corps reported that "all the battalions" of the 1st Parachute Division were down to the strength of companies.

6. Supplying the battle north of the Sangro had thrown a heavy burden upon the Army Service Corps and upon the Provost troops charged with traffic control. The 1st Division's Provost Company, recruited in 1939 from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, had several men killed by shellfire while on point duty in or around Ortona.

7. The fighting power of an infantry battalion lies chiefly in its rifle companies, whose strength however is only a little more than half that of the battalion as a whole. The vast majority of casualties are suffered by the rifle companies. Thus when a battalion of 800 men is reduced to 500, the rifle companies are probably down to about 100; there is no cutting edge left on the weapon, and thé unit is unfit for offensive fighting.

8. "Sitreps": situation reports. "Recce": reconnoitre. The "S" anti-personnel mine was a particularly unpleasant product of German ingenuity. When the mine was trodden on, its inner body leaped into the air and exploded, scattering ball-bearings over a wide area.

Chapter 9:

1. The river, called the Rapido in the vicinity of Cassin, becomes the Gari lower down, before joining with the Liri to form the Garigliano.

2. During April the Three Rivers Regiment had supported the 78th Division in the "ghost town" of Cassino, two tanks being driven into the "Crypt" only a few yards from the enemy.

3. On German tank types, see below, p. 183 [sic].

4. The actual German designation of the position which the Allies called the Adolf Hitler Line was "Führer-Riegel" (Führer Switch Line). Hitler, however, evidently thought this name decidedly inappropriate for a position which might be broken at an early date; and on 23 January 1944 Kesselring's Chief of Staff told the Chief of Staff of the Tenth Army on the telephone, "we may not call the Führer-Riegel by that name any more, the Führer has forbidden it". The next day an order was issued changing the name to "Senger-Riegel". General von Senger and Etterlin was commander of the 14th Panzer Corps.

5. Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank": this weapon, firing a two-and-a-half-pound hollow-charge projectile, had replaced the Boys rifle as the infantry anti-tank arm.

6. The organization of an armoured brigade included a motor battalion, a unit of motorized infantry capable of working with or ahead of the armoured regiments.

7. Lieut. Perkins received the Distinguished Service Order (very rarely conferred upon a subaltern) and his troop-sergeant, Sergeant C. N. Macey, was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

8. This name, found on a captured map, was apparently the Germans' first name for the position, and was generally used by the Allies. The enemy, however, subsequently called it the Green Line.

Chapter X:

1. Limited resources in landing craft had compelled the abandonment of the idea of an assault simultaneous with the Normandy landings.

2. September 1944 was the deadliest month of Canada's Italian war. Total Canadian Army casualties in the theatre for the month amounted in all categories to 256 officers and 3853 other ranks.

3. The German machine carbine.

4. The "wasp" (mounted on a carrier) was in part a product of Canadian development; it was first used in Normandy. The "Crocodile" was a converted Churchill tank.

5. His promotion, announced on 27 November, dated from 4 June, the day of the fall of Rome.

6. There had been even more divisions in the country earlier. The identified total in October 1944 was 28. When the final round began in April 1945, Field-Marshal Alexander had 17 divisions, plus nine independent brigades and four Italian combat groups, against 23 German and four Italian divisions in Italy. In estimating the value of the campaign one should also, perhaps, take account of the German forces in the Balkans and (until our invasion in August 1944) in Southern France; in some degree, at least, these forces too were being contained by the threat of the Allied Armies in Italy.

Chapter XI:

1. The Normandy campaign and its preliminaries will be found described in rather greater detail in the booklet Canada's Battle in Normandy. This chapter and the following one, however, incorporate considerable new material and a few corrections.

2. Hughes-Hallett commanded Force "J" both before and after the period (May-August 1943) when he served at COSSAC as principal naval staff officer concerned with the preparation of the OVERLORD outline plan.

3. Of course, these bridges would have been equally important if we had landed in the Pas de Calais, so our attacks upon them did not give our plan away. The Loire bridges were left along until after D Day.

4. One company of the Canadian Scottish had taken part in the assault, landing on the extreme right under the command of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

5. All these figures refer merely to the seaborne assault force, and take no account of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, which dropped with the 6th Airborne Division. That battalion had 117 casualties on D Day; as a result of its being dropped over too wide an area, 81 men became prisoners. There were 20 fatal casualties.

6. This interpretation is in accordance with interrogations of enemy commanders carried out by Canadian officers. Rundstedt, it is true, declined to admit any disagreement between himself and his subordinate: "Rommel was under my command, you know", he observed. Nevertheless, his Chief of Staff, General Gunther Blumentritt, agreed that there was a difference of opinion and that the result was "an unhappy compromise".
[NOTE: Rommel's strategy was based on an appreciation of Allied air power and the difficulties that would be faced by armoured formations attempting to move toward the battlefield. -- HyperWar]

7. The 45-ton "Panther" (Mark V) first appeared in action in 1943, on the Russian front. It mounted a long 75-millimetre gun, whereas the 56-ton "Tiger" (Mark VI) had an 88. The Panther was faster than the Tiger. The latter appeared in Normandy in a new form--the "Royal Tiger", 67 tons in weight and mounting a still longer and more powerful 88. Although Panthers were numerous in Normandy from the beginning, the Tiger in either of its forms was relatively rare. This was as well, for as a Canadian tank officer wrote feelingly, it was "a hell of a tank". The Panther, however, was quite formidable enough. It was not Allied policy to produce such heavy tanks. The Churchill, the heaviest British tank used in this campaign, weighted just under 40 tons; the Sherman, the American medium tank which was the Allied maid of all work and with which Canadian armoured brigades were equipped, weighed 30. The Sherman's armour was not proof against the best German guns. It should be added that, in Normandy as elsewhere, the enemy used many Mark IV medium tanks--23-tonners. On this question of Allied versus German tanks, the interested reader is referred to General George C. Marshall's report, The Winning of the War in Europe and the Pacific (pages 95-6).

Chapter XII:

1. On the 18th, the 4th Infantry Brigade's commander, Brigadier Sherwood Lett, who had been wounded while commanding this same brigade at Dieppe, was again wounded and had to relinquish the command. Brigadier J. E. Ganong took over the Brigade a few days later.

2. On this, date the 12th United States Army Group came into existence, under Lt.-Gen. Bradley. General Bradley's old command, the First U.S. Army, passed to Lt.-Gen. Courtney H. Hodges. For the present, the operations of the 12th Army Group continued under the "general direction and control" of General Montgomery's Headquarters.

3. First Canadian Army was gallantly and effectively supported in its operations by No. 84 Group R.A.F., commanded by Air Vice-Marshal L. O. Brown (and subsequently by Air Vice-Marshal E. C. Hudleston), whose headquarters moved with Army Headquarters throughout. There were fourteen R.C.A.F. squadrons in North-West Europe; but unfortunately all of them, instead of supporting their fellow-Canadians, were assigned to No. 83 Group, with the Second Army.

4. Kluge succeeded Rundstedt as Commander-in-Chief West early in July, after Rundstedt (according to his owd account) had advised the High Command to make peace.

5. The "Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers" (A.V.R.E.) first went into action on the beaches on D Day. It was a converted Churchill tank armed with a "petard" which fired a very heavy projectile for demolishing concrete defences.

6. Meyer has claimed that the Germans had only 50 tanks available east of the Orne at this time. The estimate of our own intelligence was 90. Enemy documents may yet settle his point more definitely.

7. At 6:55 a.m. the group reported itself on the objective (Point 195). It was in fact some 6500 yards north-east of it. On 9 August 1946, precisely two years later, the writer visited the spot and found it still marked by the rusty hulls of the B.C. Regiment's tanks, shot through and through by the 88s that had lurked in the neighbouring copses.

8. Although examination of the battlefield did not reveal as many tanks destroyed by air action as the ola ins [sicof our air forces had indicated, German documents seem to leave no doubt whatever that the air attacks were a major factor in stopping this counter-offensive in its tracks.

9. This incident, including the origine of the order to Patton, is still obscure. General Patton, in his posthumously-published book, War As I Knew, is content to record that the Third U. S. Army was ordered not to take Falaise, "allegedly" because the British had dropped time-bombs in the area. It may be noted that soon after midnight of 12-13 August First Canadian Army was warned (by the 12th U.S. Army Group) that delayed-action bombe had been dropped on the Argentan-Falaise road at eight p.m.; the message added, "maximum delay 12 hours". The Historical Section of the R.C.A.F. informs the writer that operational reports for the night of 12-13 August indicate that these bombs were dropped by the United States 9th Air Force. For some other suggestions on the reasons for the order to Patton, see Capt. Harry C. Butcher, My Three Year & with Eieenhower, p. 641.

10. The Seventh Army War Diary indicates that at a conference on this date Kluge took the decision to withdraw the armoured group from this area and use it against the American thrust towards Alençon. The decision was "subject to the approval of the Führer", but the movement began at once. The failure of the offensive doubtless explains the sudden removal of Kluge a few days later and his replacement by Model. Kluge committed suicide after losing his command.

11. It is of interest to recall that in pre-D Day planning the role of the First Canadian Army was defined as an advance eastward from the bridgehead, an attack across the lower reaches of the seine in the face of opposition and the capture of Le Havre. With this in view, the 2nd Canadian Corps and particularly the 2nd Division carried out special training on the River Trent (Exercise KATE--Crossing a Tidal Estuary). Thanks to our great victory in Lower Normandy, this perilous Seine assault operation did not materialize.

12. The Seventh Army had controlled the Germans' western sector; the Fifth Panzer Army (called earlier Panzer Group West) had faced the British and Canadians.

Chapter XIII:

1. During this period of rapid advance our reconnaissance units came into their own. The 7th Reconnaissance Regiment (17th Duke of York's Royal Canadian Hussars) led the rush of the 3rd Division into the Pas de Calais, and the 2nd Canadian Corps' armoured car unit, the 18th Armoured Car Regiment (12th Manitoba Dragoons) was the spearhead of the 4th Armoured Division.

2. See Canada's Battle in Normandy, pages 148-56. It was found that the men killed in the raid had been buried in a cemetery, near the Bois des Vertus, to which the French people of the district had given every care.

3. It may be noted at this point that on 1 September General Eisenhower, in accordance with the arrangements made before D Day, assumed personal control of the ground forces and General Montgomery (who was now promoted Field Marshal) ceased to act as ground commander. His command hereafter was limited to the Second British and First Canadian Armies.

4. During the period of the Arnhem operation in September, the threat of our advance led the Germans to withdraw their rocket units temporarily from the area around The Hague from which they bombarded London. From 25 September to 12 October they fired at Norwich instead.

5. The Czechs remained under First Canadian Army until 27 November, when they passed to the direct control of the 21st Army Group. They continued to contain Dunkirk until the end of the war in Europe, when their commander, Major-General A. Liska, had the satisfaction of receiving the surrender of the town.

6. The guns in action were two 14-inch manned by the Royal Marine Siege Regiment, and two 15-inch manned by the 540th Coast Regiment, Royal Artillery. In addition to the direct hit mentioned, there were repeated hits within German battery positions.

7. The 3rd Division was assisted in this task by the 2nd Division's machine-gun unit, the Toronto Scottish Regiment (M.G.).

8. War As I Knew It.

Chapter XIV:

1. The name Savojaards Plant properly applies to the mudilats in the mouth of the inlet.

2. The 6th Brigade's commander, Brigadier J. G. Gauvreau, had been badly wounded on the 26th when his jeep struck a mine.

3. In terms of divisions, the following was the composition of First Canadian Army on 31 October 1944: Canadian, 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions, 4th Armoured Division; British, 49th (West Riding) and 52nd (Lowland) Divisions; United States, 104th Infantry Division; Polish, let Armoured Division. An additional nationality was represented by the let Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group, containing Dunkirk. The Royal Netherlands Brigade came back under command on 8 November.

4. The 82nd and 101st U.S. Airborne Divisions, which had been in this area since the Arnhem operation, now came under Canadian Army command for a short period.

5. Major-General A. B. Matthews had taken command of the 2nd Division on General Foulkes' departure for Italy to take over the lot Canadian Corps.

6. The largest month of the war, naturally enough, was the first, September 1939, when 54,873 men enlisted; apart from this, June and July 1940 saw the peak of enlistments. The figures here given do not include men appointed to commissions.

7. There would have been some thousands of infantry reinforcements in training. On 30 October General Stuart, on the basis of the latest information, summed up as follows in a memorandum to the Minister of National Defence: "The resulting situation emerging on 31 Dee will be a shortage in Inf Units in the field of about 2380; a holding in the U.K. of about 8600 infantry in training and a holding of about 9000 other arms reinforcements. Of this 8600 infantry only 3600 will be available to meet casualties in Jan 44." ("Jan 44" obviously ought to read "Jan 45.")

8. General Stuart did not return to C.M.H.Q. Major-General Montague was appointed Chief of Staff there, with the rank of Lieutenant-General.

9. During the whole of November, including the final week after the announcement that N.R.M.A. men would be sent abroad, there were 7371 enlistments, including conversions from N.R.M.A.

10. The decision to send N.R.M.A. men overseas caused a considerable wave of desertion among these soldiers. On 20 January it was announced that 7800 had at one time been overdue or absent without leave, and that 6300 were still absent at that date. There were breaches of discipline (though happily no bloodshed) in a number of camps.

11. General McNaughton failed of election to the House of Commons in a by-election and subsequently in the general election of 11 June 1945. He resigned in August, after the Japanese surrender, and was succeeded as Minister of National Defence by Mr. D. C. Abbott.

Chapter XV:

1. As the result of trials carried out in England and on the Continent, the 1st Rocket Unit, Royal Canadian Artillery, was formed on 23 December 1944. The unit was equipped with 12 rocket projectors, each of 32 barrels.

2. The correspondents in the field understood and cooperated; but elsewhere there was less comprehension. Throughout the war it was difficult for civilians (including editors) to understand that the composition of an Army was a very fluid thing, and that there were long periods when the Eighth British Army for instance, had very few United Kingdom divisions under its command.

3. The Waal, we may recall once more, is the main stream of the Rhine, and is called the Rhine within the German frontier.

4. Small, box-like anti-personnel mines, difficult to detect because of the few metal parts used in their construction.

5. A complete Canadian regiment of these had been authorized in October 1944. The 1st Canadian Armoured Personnel Carrier Regiment was then formed and incorporated in the 79th Armoured Division.

6. Brigadier Moncel had taken over the 4th Armoured Brigade when Brigadier Booth was killed in the battle of the Laison Valley.

7. A portable one-man anti-tank weapon comparable to the British PIAT or the American "Bazooka".

8. The anxiety of the German High Command was no doubt related to the fact that on 7 March, in a brilliantly executed operation, the First United States Army had seized the Ludendorff railway bridge across the Rhine at Remagen.

9. German casualties in the west for the period 8 February-14 March were estimated by SHAEF at 210,000. During the month of March, including operations east of the Rhine, some $43,000 Germans were taken prisoner.

Chapter XVI:

1. Two days before the assault, a squadron of Allied fighter-bombers had singled out sohlemm's headquarters at Dorsten and he was severely wounded. A week later, he relinquished his command to General Gunther Blumentritt and spent the remainder of the campaign in hospital.

2. Not to be confused with the village of the same name west of the Rhine which had been captured in February.

3. The 6th Infantry Brigade was taken over by Brigadier J. V. Allard, formerly commanding the Royal 22e Régiment.

4. Called in earlier times the Zuider Zee.

5. So runs the report. The soldiers who had contact with Seyss-Inquart during the subsequent conferences found that he would commit himself to nothing.

Chapter XVII:

1. Readers interested in the details of the organization of the force will find the evidence reviewed in Report on the Canadian Expeditionary Force to the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, by Right Hon. Sir Lyman P. Duff, G.C.M.G., Royal Commissioner (Ottawa, 1942).

2. This is 12:55 p.m. 7 December Ottawa time, and 1:25 a.m. 8 December Hong Kong time.

3. All times and dates in the account that follows are Hong Kong unless otherwise noted.

4. The outline of the operations of Canadian units which follows derives mainly from accounts, equivalent to unit war diaries, written subsequently in prison camps under the noses of Japanese guards and carefully preserved (in at least one case by being buried) until the day of liberation. The creation and preservation of these records is not the least of the debts which their country owes to the men of Hong Kong.

5. Colonel Shoji, who commanded the Japanese "butai" (evidently roughly equivalent to a brigade group) which was operating in this area, states that on the evening of 20 December he "apologized" to his divisional commander for having incurred so many casualties (approximattely 800).

6. For the Japanese plans, see United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacific), Naval Analysis Division, The Campaigns of the Pacific War (Washington, 194(s). Hong Kong was attacked by "one Group of the 23rd Army"; the troops actually employed appear to have been the 38th Infantry Division, strongly reinforced with extra artillery and other elements. It is estimated that there were the equivalent of one and a half Japanese divisions on Hong Kong Island at the time of the surrender. The Japanese are reported to have held a memorial service for 1995 of their men who fell in the operations.

7. Brigade Headquarters, four officers and 16 other ranks; Royal Rifles of Canada, seven officers and 123 other ranks; Winnipeg Grenadiers, 12 officers and 128 other ranks.

8. Major-General (formerly Col.) Tanaka Ryosaburo, who commanded one of the infantry regiments which attacked the island, was in due course tried by a War Crimes Court for his part in these atrocities and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment.

9. Col. Tokunaga, Commandant of the Hong Kong prison camps, and Capt. Saito, Medical Officer, were tried by a War Crimes Court at Hong Kong in October 1946-February 1947 and sentenced to be hanged. The sentences were subsequently commuted to life imprisonment and twenty years' imprisonment respectively.

10. One man had died on the original voyage to Hong Kong.

11. The Home Defence division formerly bearing this number had been disbanded in December 1944.

Chapter XVIII:

1. It was this machine, considerably modified, which was used in the long march of Exercise MUSK-OX through the North-West Territories in 1946. The Americans on their side produced, with some aid from Canada's National Research Council and other Allied countries, an excellent tracked amphibious vehicle which became famous as the "Weasel".

2. At one time (just before the Anzio Bridgehead break-out) the total effective strength of the Force exceeded 3200. For this and other information the author is indebted to the kindness of Major-General Robert T. Frederick, U.S.A.

3. During its existence the Battalion had suffered 776 casualties in all categories; 13 officers and 137 other ranks lost their lives.

4. It is obviously impossible here to refer by name to all the brave men engaged in this work or to tell of their exploits. Major Bieler and his record must stand as types of all of them. He was a pioneer, at a time when our organization was less complete and efficient than it later became; and of all the Canadian agents he was perhaps the most skilful and effective. He was awarded the D.S.O. and the M.B.E.

Conclusion

1. The former "Reinforcement Units", which had now reversed their old function.

2. See the statement made by the Prime Minister in the Canadian House of Commons, 10 March 1947.

3. This figure does not include 57,483 men called up for service who transferred to the Active Army and are embraced in the figures for that Army given above; it does include 5793 N.R.M.A. men who were subsequently transferred to the Navy or Air Force.

4. It is estimated that 40.6 per cent of the male population of ages 18 to 45 served in the armed forces.

5. The Air Force had 17,047 fatal casualties, a particularly heavy proportion. None of the casualty figures here given include prisoners of war who were subsequently repatriated. For the Army, such prisoners numbered 6432 all ranks.

Appendix A

1. General Crerar was first appointed to C.M.H.Q as "Brigadier, General Staff".

2. General McNaughton actually relinquished active command of the Canadian Corps on 14 Nov. 41 as the result of an illness. When recovered he left :on a visit to Canada, and on returning to England took command of First Canadian Army.

3. Maj.-Gen. McNaughton was promoted Lt.-Gen. 10 Jul. 40 and appointed to command the 7th Corps 19 Jul. 40.

4. General Crerar never actually commanded the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division as on the same day on which he was appointed he was detailed temporarily to command the Canadian Corps.

Appendix B

1. This company was supplied by The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment), which also provided a total of seventeen platoons for defence and/or employment duties at army, divisional and brigade headquarters.

2. The motor battalion formed part of the armoured brigade of the armoured division.



Transcribed and formatted for HTML by Patrick Clancey, HyperWar Foundation